[hawaiianlei]

whats the difference among spyware, malware, and adware?
and how are they different from viruses?

[Advertisements]

simple answer (i'm sure someone will jump in with more detail)

spyware spies, malware mals (does malicious things), and adware tries to get you to buy something

the simple deffinition of a computer virus is any program that replicates itself without user intervention

[dsenette]

simple answer (i'm sure someone will jump in with more detail)

spyware spies, malware mals (does malicious things), and adware tries to get you to buy something

the simple deffinition of a computer virus is any program that replicates itself without user intervention

[Rawe]

If you want to have a read from Wikipedia..

Spyware
Malware
Adware.

[fleamailman]

Both spyware and addware are bad so most people use the word malware to mean all three types.

[Jayzeee]

This Tutorial by Grinler gives good definitions of different types of malware.

[Johanna]

Hmmm...just read Grinler's tutorial. The definitions of malware are explained well, just a little confused over:

Backdoor Santas

These are programs that you download off the Internet and contain valid uses. They do though, collect statistics of your computer use, the sites you go to, the type of hardware, etc and transmit this information back to their servers. They generally do not work with adware networks. Programs of this type are Comet Cursor, Alexa, Hotbar, and Cuteftp.

CuteFTP is NOT malware. CuteFTP is a nifty file transfer program for webpages. It is packed with features, but is not doing anything malicious, or calling home. I wonder if there used to be a malware with the same name? I notice the tutorial was written in 2004. Can anyone shed some light on why cuteftp would be listed with the "bad guys"? btw, Alexa comes with a Windows install, and you can use Spybot to remove it.Johanna

[Jayzeee]

I did a little digging, and the only thing I found was this..

Cute FTP bundles adware programs Aureate/Radiate and Timesink/Conducent - both gather information on your Web surfing and transmits the data to their respective servers.

http://www.fbmsoftwa...cation/CuteFTP/

As you say, the article is quite old...I doubt if this is the case now.

[Johanna]

I bought the paid version of CuteFTP, version 6, in early 2005, maybe? There is no adware or other programs associated with it, and it did not come "bundled" with anything at all. It is an efficient FTP manager, and was worth the few dollars it cost. Perhaps the free version has piggybacks, I don't know? I would recommend CuteFTP by globalSCAPE for anyone needing a trustworthy versatile FTP proggie because I have been a satisfied customer.
Johanna

[Jayzeee]

Yes, I have personally never used CuteFTP (or ever looked into it until now), it does appear to be a quality product. That was the only bad article I could find in amongst all of the good reviews. Those adware programs are old....and I suspect have died out of existence. I wasn't trying to badname globalSCAPE, just trying to figure out why it had been included as malware

[hawaiianlei]

thx!